KALAMAZOO, MI – When officers spot them, the X-Trains snake the length of as many as 75 vehicles.

Passengers in the slow moving “mobile after-hours party,” as Kalamazoo Public Safety Assistant Chief Brian Uridge calls it, can number in the hundreds.

But Uridge said it isn’t only the shear number of people involved in the X-Trains that concern local police. Of greater worry are the problems — noise, alcohol, drugs, reckless driving and gunfire, among others — that tend to come from the activity, he said.

Uridge said that is what prompted KDPS to launch a crackdown last month and this past weekend on cruising with members of its new Community Outreach and Problem Solving Division (C.O.P.S.), patrol officers from the agency’s Operations Division and parole officers from the Michigan Department of Corrections.

“What the C.O.P.S. division did is they spent some time focusing on just that problem,” Uridge said. “Our patrol division has consistently worked on that problem … the problem is they’re trying to deal with it while, at the same time, dealing with a heavy call volume at that time of night."

As an example, Uridge said that over a three-hour period one night while members of the C.O.P.S. division took part in the cruising crackdown, patrol officers responded to 54 other calls for service throughout the city.

The recent operation netted 23 arrests, including 21 Kalamazoo residents, and the seizure of 14 vehicles that were impounded.

Uridge said the crackdown is part of a more concentrated effort by KDPS to address cruising, which has been a long-standing issue that has plagued areas in and around the northern part of downtown and the city’s north side.

In March 2011, Tiffany Ayers, 39, was shot and killed near the corner of Florence Street and North Westnedge Avenue as Public Safety officers were nearby clearing out crowds from a cruising line.

“We’re trying to prevent the associated violence and problems that go along with this,” Uridge said. “As a community, we don’t need another homicide related to this.”

Uridge said the X-Trains typically pop up between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays in the city and cruise until 6 or 7 a.m.

“It’s a mobile after-hours party that’s facilitated by technology,” he said. “As fast as we move them out of one area, it will pop up in a new area.”

Uridge said that KDPS officials plan to keep focusing on cruising and the X-Trains with the help of the agency’s new division.

He said that doing so is part of the vision KDPS Chief Jeff Hadley had when he announced the formation of the new unit in April as a way of doing proactive community policing to reduce violent crime in the city.

“Our focus now is to continue enforcement, provide resources … but at the same time we’ve got to get the community more involved, we need the community’s help in getting this problem solved.”

In addition to addressing cruising, the C.O.P.S. division, which works with representatives from parole, as well as the city's community planning and development and public services departments, has been tasked with focusing on other issues such as blight reduction, community initiatives and keying in on violent offenders and crime trends through the use of data and intelligence.